The purpose of the Representative for Children and Youth's (RCY) reviews and investigations of child deaths and critical injuries is to identify and thoughtfully analyze issues - particularly service delivery. The intent is to help prevent similar deaths or injuries in the future and to inform improvements to services.

Today’s landmark ruling by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, formally recognizing that federal provision of First Nations child and family services on-reserve across Canada is discriminatory, is a welcome and important step toward equality for Aboriginal children with their non-Aboriginal peers, said Representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond.

Representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond will address the human rights of Indigenous children as part of the University of British Columbia's Janusz Korczak Lecture Series How to Love a Child that continues this week.

The series honours the memory and teachings of Poland’s Dr. Janusz Korczak, an early advocate for children’s rights, including their right for human dignity and respect, and whose ideas remain highly regarded today. The United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child is informed and inspired by Korczak’s theories.

This joint report is a collaborative initiative undertaken by the Representative for Children and Youth and the Ministry of Children and Family Development. The report was initiated after the tragic death of a British Columbia youth in care in September 2015 who was placed in a hotel. The purpose of the report is to gain a better understanding of the practice of placing children and youth in hotels with the goal of improving the child- and youth-serving system and eliminating hotel placements.

How are youth doing in British Columbia? What do they think about health, money, bullying, and other issues they face? To follow up our report Growing Up in B.C. 2015, the Representative's Office has released a new infographic that provides a snapshot of children and youth.

The Representative's latest B.C. Adoption Update provides key statistics for this fiscal year to date and for the two previous fiscal years. Numbers released today show improvement in some areas of B.C.'s provincial adoption process, including an increase in the number of approved adoptive homes per month and the number of available Aboriginal adoptive homes.

Canada's National Child Day – marked on Nov. 20 each year – commemorates the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child (UNCRC) and gives us the opportunity to step back and take a look at the state of children and youth in our country and to ask whether our laws and policies reflect the intent of the UNCRC.

On National Child Day (November 20, 2015), the members of the Canadian Council of Child and Youth Advocates (CCCYA) repeat their call to the federal government and provincial and territorial governments to come together and address the dire situation of Indigenous child welfare in Canada.